Contemporary or historical? - 1950s era novel

The cut-off date is generally considered to be about 1945 (tho I've heard as early as WWI), but if you're self-publishing it's a little different. As long as you're very clear about the dates I see no reason you couldn't market it as historical.

SelmaW said:

The cut-off date is generally considered to be about 1945 (tho I've heard as early as WWI), but if you're self-publishing it's a little different. As long as you're very clear about the dates I see no reason you couldn't market it as historical.

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Huh! Really? I'm not arguing, just asking for information, because I just don't know. Anything in the past 60 or so years would be called 'contemporary'? I would have thought that 'contemporary' meant set in the present day at the time of the novel's writing. But then again, what do I know?

This is totally one of those "depends on the publisher" situations. I know of one publisher that has branded a book set in the sixties as historical.

You might look at: What do you consider "historical fiction"?

Gotta say, it's weird to think of periods I lived through as "historical."

It seems weird to me that events that occured over sixty years ago are "contemporary."

If it's set before an average readership's adult lifetime, it's historical - at least according to an industry panel I attended a couple of years ago. That means that even the eighties aren't considered really contemporary now.

I've heard that it's not only a matter of the right props and clothing, but the prevailing mindset of the day. Things we find normal today would have been incomprehensible to someone in the fifties or sixties, and vice versa. To bridge that gap, modern writers and screenwriters build a composite 'voice' that conveys the target time period, but is accessible to modern readers. Look at 'Mad Men' or 'Pan Am' for good current examples, and then read romances and thrillers written & set in your target time period. There's a difference, ranging from subtle to vast.

Part of why you don't see more clear delineations for this sort of thing is because books set between WWII and the 1980s or so are a tough sell unless they're memoir or The Next Great American Novel. Not that you can't write one, of course but you'll have to have an extra-fantastic query to catch an agent or editor's attention. As long as your query makes it clear what time period your book is in, it's up to the agent/editor to figure out how to market it.